People Jesus Met Part 43 - The Man Born Blind

You know, today we return to our series entitled People Jesus Met. And in our passage for today, John chapter 9, Jesus meets the man born blind. This is one of my very favorite passages in all the Bible. So let's begin.

Let's get right to it. John chapter 9, verse 1. The Bible says, We need to understand that in Bible times, it was a common belief that if tragedy or suffering came upon you, it was because you had committed some horrible sin. But the Lord Jesus straightens this out.

Watch as he does it. Verse 3. Jesus said, In other words, Jesus says God in his mighty sovereignty ordained that this man be born blind because God in his mighty wisdom planned to use this man's affliction to bring glory to himself. Now, as followers of Jesus Christ today, we need to hear what Jesus is saying here in this verse about our troubles and about our sicknesses, about our problems. Yes, sometimes God sends trouble and sickness into the life of a believer to discipline that believer for sin in their life.

And we should always check out that possibility first. But far more often, God sovereignly puts trouble in our lives because he has a plan to redeem it and turn it into glory for himself. You know, my daughter, Jill, who, as many of you know, is severely mentally retarded and disabled, when she was first born, I used to pray, Lord, what have I done? What sin have I committed that you would do this to me?

And it was a number of years later I was reading John chapter 9 in my devotions and the Holy Spirit almost spoke to me audibly and said, Lon, OK, here's your answer right in this verse. Jill is not the way she is because of any sin you did or that Brenda did or that Jill did. Jill is the way she is because I've got a plan, a plan to redeem her suffering and redeem your suffering and turn it into great glory for myself.

And you don't see that plan yet, but you just stick with me, Lon, and you just trust me. Well, 18 years later, here at McLean Bible Church, there's Access Ministry, there's Beautiful Blessings, there's Breakout, there's Breakaway, there's soon to be Jill's house, all serving children with disabilities for the glory of God. And churches come from all around America to learn what we're doing here and take it back to their churches and to their communities. The point is that God has done precisely what He said. He has redeemed Jill's sickness. He has redeemed all the accompanying pain and He has turned it into glory for Himself. And my friend, as a follower of Christ, you may not be able to see yet how God's going to redeem your sorrow, how He's going to redeem your suffering. Eighteen years ago I couldn't see it either, but that's all right.

We don't have to be able to see it because Isaiah 55 verse 8, God says, My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are My ways your ways, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts. God says, I don't need you to understand it. I got it under control.

Okay? So I urge you with your troubles, with your problems, with your struggles to do what the Holy Spirit told me to do, and that is to stick with God and trust Him. He will keep His word to you just like He kept His word to me. And I promise you one day as you look back on all of it, you will sing with Fanny Crosby, indeed Jesus led me all the way. Now, that's not the sermon.

That's just a bonus that I put in. Okay. But we want to go on now in the passage and let's look and see how God redeems this man's blindness and turns it into the glory of God.

All right? Verse 6. Having said this, Jesus spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva and applied it to the man's eyes and said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.

And so the man went and washed and came back seeing. Hey, before we just gloss over this, let's remind ourselves Jesus just healed a blind man. Praise the Lord.

Huh? Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

All right. Verse 13. So the crowd brought the man who was formerly blind to the rabbis. Now, on the day on which Jesus made the mud and opened the man's eyes was a Sabbath. So the rabbis asked the man how he received his sight and the man replied, He, Jesus, put mud on my eyes and I washed and now I see. Therefore, some of the rabbis said, This man is not from God because he worked. He made mud on the Sabbath. He doesn't keep the Sabbath. But the other rabbis were saying, How can a man who is a sinner perform such great miracles?

And so there was a division among them. Finally, they said to the blind man, Well, what do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened and the man said, He is a prophet.

Now I love this. Here's this ordinary everyday man standing before the theological intelligentsia of Israel. This man was not a theologian. He was not a Bible scholar. He was not a professionally trained rabbi, but he had more spiritual insight than all of them put together.

I love it. Verse 18, The rabbi still did not believe it of him that he had been blind and had received his sight. So they sent for the man's parents and they asked them, Is this your son whom you say was born blind? How is it that he can now see? And his parents said, Well, we know this is our son and we know that he was born blind. But how he now sees and who opened his eyes we do not know. Ask him, they said. He is of age.

He can speak for himself. John, the writer of the gospel, adds, His parents said this because they were afraid. For the rabbis had decided that anyone who confessed that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. And this is why they said, He is of age.

Ask him. So the rabbi summoned the man who had been blind for a second time and said to him, Give God the praise for we know this man, Jesus, is a sinner. Then the blind man said, This is great.

This is great. He said, Whether he's a sinner or not, I don't know. But one thing I do know, whereas once I was blind, now I can see.

And you guys didn't do this for me. I'm sticking with him. I'm sticking with him. Well, the rabbis asked him again, What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? And the man answered, I've told you already and you didn't listen.

Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too? Then the rabbis hurled insults at him and said, You are his disciple. We are disciples of Moses.

We know that God spoke to Moses. But as for this fellow, we don't know where he is from. And the man replied, Well, he said, Here is an amazing thing.

You don't know where he's from, yet he opened my eyes. The man goes on, We know God does not listen to sinners. He listens to worshippers of God who do his will.

Since the beginning of time, the man says, It has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. Then the rabbi said, You were steeped in sin at birth.

How dare you lecture us? And they threw him out into the street. Jesus heard they had thrown him out and found him and said, Do you believe in the Son of Man, meaning himself? And then the man said, Lord, I believe.

And he worshipped Jesus at that point. Now, this is a wonderful passage, but we're at the end of it. And so it's time for us to ask our most important question.

And I know you've been going through withdrawal this summer. And so here's your fix. Here we go. Are you ready?

Are you ready? Here we go. We're going to need to take a deep breath. Here we go.

One, two, three. So what? Oh, how sweet it is, huh?

Yeah. You say, Lon, so what? You say, Listen, I mean, this is a wonderful passage and I love John Chapter 9. But honestly, I don't see one single way in which this passage connects with my life practically today.

Well, let's help with that. Let's ask the question to begin with. What stands out most to you as you look back over this passage we just read?

Well, let me give you my answer. What stands out most to me in this passage is the spiritual blindness of these rabbis. I mean, after a healing like Jesus did here in John Chapter 9, how could he be anything else but the Messiah? And, you know, this wasn't the only healing Jesus ever performed in Israel. Matthew Chapter 15, verse 30 says, Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they laid them at Jesus' feet, and he healed them. In fact, Luke Chapter 6, verse 19 makes a point to tell us that he healed them all. And these healings that Jesus was doing, these were no secret in Israel. Mark Chapter 1, verse 45 says, The news about Jesus spread to such an extent that Jesus could no longer enter a town openly, but had to stay out in the unpopulated areas, yet people still came to him from everywhere.

You say, well, Lon, okay. But, you know, maybe it was all these people out in the countryside who were getting to see all of these healings and miracles of Jesus. Maybe the rabbis who were concentrated in Jerusalem, I mean, maybe this is the first one they had ever seen. Maybe they didn't know about all these other healings. Oh, not so, kimosabe.

No, no, no, no. Listen, Matthew Chapter 21, verse 14, And the blind and the lame came to Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem, where all the rabbis hung out, and he healed them. But look at this, when the chief priests and rabbis saw, hello, when they saw the wonderful things he did, they were indignant. Friends, the point is that Jesus filled the entire land of Israel with his healings, such that anybody with a brain should have immediately fallen to their knees and confessed him as the Messiah of Israel. You say, well, Lon, my question is, so why didn't the rabbis do this? I mean, their blindness to believe seems humanly unexplainable.

Well, you're exactly right. It is humanly unexplainable because it was not human blindness. Rather, it was spiritual blindness that these rabbis suffered from.

And let me explain. The Bible says, Ephesians Chapter 2, verse 1, that as unbelievers in Jesus Christ, we are all dead in our trespasses, spiritually dead in our trespasses and our sins. And the Bible also says that part of the fallout of being spiritually dead is that we are spiritually blind to the presence of God, to the reality of God, to the truth of the Word of God.

Ephesians Chapter 4, verse 18, God describes unbelievers in this way. And I quote, having their understanding darkened and being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, look, because of the, what's the next word, say it, blindness, not of their eyes, the blindness of their heart. This is spiritual blindness we're talking about here. 2 Corinthians 4, 4 says, the God of this world, Satan, has blinded not the eyes but the minds of the unbelieving so that they cannot see the light of the gospel. Folks, every human being in this world who is outside of Jesus Christ is in this condition of spiritual blindness. And this is why in John Chapter 9, even though it was as clear as the nose on their face, those rabbis simply couldn't see who Jesus was. This is why your unbelieving father can't see it no matter how many times you talk to him and you plead with him. This is why your unbelieving mother doesn't see it and why your unbelieving neighbors and co-workers and friends at school don't see it because they're spiritually blind. And may I add, this is why you didn't see it either before you came to Christ, because you were spiritually blind. You say, but Lon, I love these people.

I care about all these people. I want these people to come to a saving knowledge of Christ. And so what can I use to break through the spiritual blindness that they have? Well, that's a great question. But before I tell you what will break through spiritual blindness, let me tell you three things that will not break through spiritual blindness in people.

Number one is human logic. Hey, the blind man here in John 9 tried that on the rabbis, didn't he? Look, verse 31, he said, we know that God doesn't listen to sinners. He listens to worshippers of God who do His will. Since the beginning of time, it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind if this man were not from God.

He could do nothing. Hey, I would call that an extremely logical argument, wouldn't you? Yeah. Hey, did it work on those rabbis?

Not on your life. They reviled him and they threw him out in the street. And yet today, so often, we try to use this same approach. We argue endlessly with unbelieving people trying to convince them of the logic of believing in Christ. We give them the book, Evidence That Demands a Verdict. And then when that doesn't work, we give them the book, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict. And then we give them CDs and we give them articles to read and we give them apologetics material. And yet it all rolls off of them like water off a duck's back.

Why? Because their problem is not the lack of logical information. The problem is spiritual blindness. Now, yes, you do need a little bit of information to come to Christ. There's nothing wrong with giving people this information. But friends, the amount of information a person needs to come to Christ can be fit in a thimble.

You don't need a lot. And the problem is, no matter how much information we give folks, spiritual blindness trumps human logic every time. The second thing that won't work and won't break through people's spiritual blindness is the compelling evidence of creation. You know, my youngest son John is taking a course in microbiology and he was telling me just the other day about what he's learning about antibiotics and about how so many of them work by ripping apart the cell wall of bad bacteria. But he also learned that the cell wall of these bad bacteria is just slightly different in construction than the cell wall of good cells in our body, which is why antibiotics rip apart bacteria and why they don't rip apart every other single cell in our body.

Folks, this is just one of thousands and thousands of intricacies in the human body. And I said to John when we were talking, I said, you know, after going to med school and seeing the astounding precision of the human body, I don't see how any doctor can be an atheist. In fact, I said these very words to a doctor friend of mine in his office not too long ago. And he replied and said, well, he said, you know, I never really thought about it. And he shrugged it off and kept going. Now, why didn't this doctor friend of mine see this?

And why doesn't Stephen Hawking see it when he looks at the amazing complexity of the cosmos? Well, it's because as compelling as the evidence of creation is, it will never break through spiritual blindness. Finally, the third thing that won't break through spiritual blindness in people are the changed lives for Christ that we seek to live here in front of them. You know, once again, the blind man tried this on the rabbis in John 9 too. He said, verse 25, whereas once I was blind, now I see. He said, hey, you rabbis, listen, Jesus Christ changed my whole life.

I mean, I'm a radically different person because of him. And the rabbis could see it. My gosh, he was standing right there in front of them able to see him after being blind. They could see the change. But did this break through the blindness of those rabbis?

No. And so often we think that this is the one that will really work with people. That when we tell people how much Jesus has changed our life, and when they see that being lived out authentically in front of them, that suddenly they will get it and they'll believe. You know, I thought that with my dad. My father, who was utterly disinterested in Christ when I came to Christ, I would sit and try to talk to my dad about Jesus and he'd take the remote and turn up the television so loud you couldn't even talk. And then if I insisted on continuing to talk, he'd turn the television off and walk out of the room. I'd call that disinterested, wouldn't you? Yeah.

Okay. Well, when I was about five years old in the Lord, in my twenties, my dad came to me one time and said to me, and I think I've told you this before, he said, you know, Lon, you've become a wonderful son. And I said to him, dad, don't kid yourself. I am still the same rotten son I have always been. What you are seeing is the transforming power of Jesus Christ operating in my life. And dad, he can operate with the same power in your life too. You say, wow, after a conversation like that, did your dad immediately accept Christ?

No, no. He was just as disinterested as before because even a transformed life happening right in front of people won't break through their spiritual blindness. You say, well, Lon, if human logic won't do it, and if the evidence of creation won't do it, and if changed lives for Christ won't do it, then what will break through people's spiritual blindness, huh? Well, the answer to that question, my friends, is that the only thing that can break through spiritual blindness is the power of the Holy Spirit Himself. This is why Jesus said, John 16, 8, and when the Holy Spirit comes, He, not human logic, not the evidence of creation, not your changed life, He will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment breaking through people's spiritual blindness and convicting them of their sin before God and convincing them Jesus is who He said He is and bringing them to their knees at the foot of the cross. This is the work of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit alone. Only He can do it. Now, that brings us to a final question, and that is, well, Lon, if only the Holy Spirit can break through people's spiritual blindness, then my question is how can we bring the full convicting power of the Holy Spirit to bear on the heart, on the life of a spiritually blind person that we love and care about?

Great question. And the answer is we do it on our knees. We do it in prayer, prayer that God will shatter their spiritual blindness, prayer that God will illuminate Ephesians chapter 4, their darkened understanding, and prayer that God will do with them what He did with the apostle Paul, Acts 9-18.

It says there that something like scales fell off the apostle Paul's eyes, and that's our prayer for our spiritually blind friends, that spiritual scales will like fall off of their eyes and suddenly they can see. You know, as a kid, I'm sure you can relate to this maybe, did you ever take a magnifying glass and use it to concentrate the sun's rays on a pile of leaves and start a fire? Or maybe to concentrate it on a little red cap and make the cap pop? Or maybe some of us used it on other things?

You know, you know, especially if you're a male. But the point that I'm trying to make to you, of course you remember that what the Bible is really telling us is that if these leaves really represent the heart of a spiritually blind person, and if the rays of the sun represent the power of the Holy Spirit, then the magnifying glass represents our prayers for them that takes the power of the Spirit and concentrates it on their heart because God has graciously agreed to honor our prayers for people's hearts when we pray them like this. And you know, my dad, I tried logic on him, didn't work. I tried the evidence of creation on him, it didn't work. I tried my own changed life on him, it didn't work.

All we ended up doing is arguing all the time. And once I was praying for him and I remember the Holy Spirit said to me, Lon, you're using all the wrong weapons, son. You need to argue with him less and you need to pray for him more. And so that day I committed myself, I was five years in to the Lord at that time, I committed myself to praying for my dad and asking the Holy Spirit to shine on his heart, asking the Holy Spirit to show him mercy, asking the Holy Spirit to lift his spiritual blindness so he could see who Jesus was. I committed myself, I was going to pray for him every day, faithfully. And you know what, two years later my dad gave his life to Jesus Christ. Can you believe that?

Amen. This is the guy who turns off the television set and walks out the room, remember him? And the most amazing part of it all is that my dad was the one who brought up the conversation that led him to Christ. I walked into his hospital room and he said to me, you know I've been doing a lot of thinking about what you've told me about Jesus and I started to think that maybe you're right.

I thought I was going to have the heart attack right then. I didn't even bring it up. You talk about the work of the Holy Spirit in a person's heart, oh my goodness. Friends, I want to say if you're a follower of Jesus here today, I can promise you that there was somebody somewhere, somebody who loved you very much, a mother, a father, a grandparent, a brother, a sister, a neighbor, a friend at school. There was somebody somewhere who through prayer focused the Holy Spirit's power on your heart and that's why the scales dropped from your eyes.

I don't believe anybody ever gets saved without somebody somewhere praying for them. And so the bottom line is, as followers of Christ, our greatest weapon in helping people we love come to Christ is not human logic and it's not the evidence of creation and it's not even our own transformed life for Christ. It's prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer.

So let's summarize. What did we learn today? Well, we've learned, number one, that unbelieving people are not just stubborn, they're spiritually blind. Two, that this blindness can only be shattered by the power of the Holy Spirit. We've learned, number three, that prayer is the magnifying glass that concentrates the Holy Spirit's power on a person's life.

And finally, we've learned that therefore the most powerful kind of evangelism is evangelism in deep partnership with prayer. Now let me leave you with a question today. Here's my question for you to think about or for you to go and talk about over lunch or to talk to your family about. Here's the question. It is, who is the most spiritually blind, the most least likely to come to Christ person you know?

Or maybe there's a couple of them. Who are they? It'd be fun to talk about that and share with your family or friends who that person is. For me, it was my dad. Absolutely not a doubt in the world.

It was my father. Well, once you've identified that person, I guess then it really begs the question of whether or not you love that person enough that you're willing to faithfully every day pray for their soul and concentrate the power of the Holy Spirit on their life. Boy, those are questions we can take home, think about and it will change our very approach to hoping people come to Christ and trying to help them. Let's pray together. Lord Jesus, thank you for instructing us today from your word in spiritual truth. And Lord, thank you that many of us here, those of us who are followers of Christ, we understand this, we get this because we're not spiritually blind anymore. Praise the Lord. We see because the Holy Spirit shone into our heart and he dropped the scales from our eyes.

Thank you, Lord. But there are a lot of friends out there we have who don't see, who are imprisoned in their spiritual blindness. And we pray, Father, that as a result of our contact with your word and you today that you would change our very approach to these people and make us prayer warriors for them. Help us to depend less on logic and less on creation and less on our life and its transformation and more on prayer. God, help us to see those least likely people to come to Christ we know actually come because of the movement of the Holy Spirit in their hearts and help us be a part of that by taking out the magnifying glass of prayer and holding it up every day for them. Father, change the way we do evangelism, the way we approach our friends because we were here today and we sat under the teaching of the word of God. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. And what did God's people say? Amen.

What did you say? Amen. Amen. Amen.